


In the Heart of a Star

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Vines | The Crimson | The Egg, Deities, Deity Foolish Gamers, Deity Hannah | Hannahxxrose, Discussion of resurrection, Frenemies, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, connor is the doorkeeper here too because i said so, mumza as death pog, no beta we die like the people who die in the orignal work lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 16:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30058296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Before the world begins to fall apart, two gods talk about how to keep it from doing so.-“Your brother,” her voice rings out through the room, crisp and clear, “is causing problems.”“Adopted brother,” he answers as if by reflex, not even looking up. “And what else is new?”
Relationships: Hannah | Hannahxxrose & Foolish Gamers (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 83





	In the Heart of a Star

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [milk and love and crimson blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973735) by [clari (twistedcupofjava)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedcupofjava/pseuds/clari). 



> I've never done this before, but I wrote this to be compliant with the above fic because it was so deeply inspiring. I hope that's okay :)
> 
> "Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?" - End Poem

There is no soil in the desert, far east of lush land and established home, but flowers bloom around the goddess’ feet anyway. Gentle petals brush against her ankles and whisper questions into the air; she murmurs an apology into the poppy in her hand before dropping it down on the path behind her.

It’d be rude to bring her own symbols into another god’s temple.

They chose different paths in this world. She built a small house just outside of the bustle, a place for people to come by, should they care to. He built a place of worship, a sanctuary based in old times, like a grainy photograph from ancient history.

She mocked him for it, the first time they spoke. Like recognizing like from even between dimensions, the moment she stepped foot onto the land for the first time, she realized that there was another like her.

They’d agreed to meet on neutral territory. The Nether is unlike anything either of them know; water becomes ephemeral, plants do not grow.

Nothing’s neutral this time. Though he lives in the snow some days, this gaudy Temple of Undying is his true home. The floor is covered in a self-aggrandizing pattern, totems painted in umber strokes. A beacon marks its centerpoint, the green sharp and decidedly artificial.

While there’s a fundamental difference in everything about them, past and present - she is in full armor, a fighter’s stance, she burns these days, while he only ever comes bearing building materials and a smile, they don’t even have the same goals - it’s nice to have someone who understands.

To some extent, at least.

Her choice of decoration wouldn’t be quite like his, even if she did choose to publicly declare herself as she was meant to.

Hannah’s footsteps click as she steps through the sandstone entryway. Foolish stands beside a pillar, digging around in a chest.

“Your brother,” her voice rings out through the room, crisp and clear, “is causing problems.”

“Adopted brother,” he answers as if by reflex, not even looking up. “And what else is new?”

It might’ve been funny at one point, but it’s not anymore. Not when what’s happening _is_ new. New and threatening, a fundamental shift in the established hierarchy, a cipher with every letter three steps back.

Hannah is a goddess, but she didn’t come here for reverence or some semblance of control. In fact, she picked her name because it is ordinary, because it blends in with the sea and the sky and the stars, because no one looks at it twice.

Foolish picked his like a punishment. They have different ways of dealing with their burdens.

Dream, meanwhile, picked his out to be a mimicry. He has no divine name to conceal, just the hubris of a man determined to be anything but.

He’s managed to turn it into a prophecy, somehow. The most persistent part of humankind, their stretch toward what’s just out of reach; Dream has managed to grab a hold of what was only ever meant to graze his fingertips.

“The one they call Theseus lives,” Hannah says. “I wouldn’t exactly call that old news.”

Unexpected shock slides across Foolish’s features. She knows he went mourning with the king and the pirate, for whatever reason, but in visiting him she’d kind of assumed he already knew about Tommy’s forced reset.

Foolish, to his credit, recovers quickly. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Biting back the retort that scratches at her teeth and threatens to spill, Hannah trails a finger along the rose-dotted vines spiralling down her arm. It’s comforting; something to contrast the cracked land and the abnormality that is being around another force.

His unawareness is vaguely alarming, but Hannah has no point of reference to know if that’s how it’s meant to be. She and Foolish don’t have domain over the same spheres, at least not anymore.

Passing skyships crossed with tangled ivy and sharks bound upstream, the roles they’ve been given periodically shuffle back into the deck as the world deems fit.

Nature _is_ Hannah, she breathes in carbon with the trees and cries rainwater. She is meant to notice any disturbance, however small, and this is a massive ripple in that vast pond.

Foolish has dominion over what comes before, something inherently unnatural, the souls that cling on with desperate threads and the unlawful water that carries their bodies forward.

“You know the answer to that,” she replies, finally.

He shrugs, nonchalant. He’s comforted simply by the space in which they stand and she distantly regrets coming to meet him here, where he is strongest and she is only just in the liminal space above where temporal feet tread.

“No, I don’t,” Foolish insists, innocence sweet in his tone. “To hear that a kid’s alive sounds like great news.”

Hannah frowns at him. “You were a Totem of Death once.”

“And you were a goddess of life,” he fires back.

Laughter bubbles in her veins like a floodlight, bright and pulsing. Life, death, it’s all the same. She has slaughtered humans and creatures unlike them, beings both innocent and guilty. She has aided just as many, if not more; breathed color back into wilt and rot.

The wheel turns with or without her, she’s just been chosen to captain the ship.

Ocean metaphors are better for Foolish, but he isn’t a part of the cycle. He is that which breaks it, a force that whispers into ears on the edge of expiry and tells them to hold on, just for a little while longer, if nothing else.

Dream is a pale imitation, a false prophet with a grandiose sense of self.

Not that she’d ever tell Foolish that. Especially not in his gold-tipped temple, extravagant for the sake of. If she can do fine for herself in a wooden cabin, surely he doesn’t need statue-tributes to civilizations he didn’t even have a hand in.

“Who’s to say I’m not still?” Hannah says.

He grins, sharp-toothed. “Ditto.”

They are at an impasse; they have been since the beginning. Foolish doesn’t strike her brittle stems with lightning and she doesn’t choke his estuary with growth, but the world isn’t quite built to handle the unbalance of power, especially not with the others around.

Something about this place seems to flock the more-than-human to it. The birds tell her that a Traveler has been chosen. A pig, so powerful he’s been declared a god by the faithless, lives up north. And of course Connor’s around somewhere, doing as he’s always done.

“Aren’t we all patrons of death in our own right?” Foolish asks, like he’s reading her thoughts.

Hannah sighs heavily, the petals on her shoulder fluttering at the exhale. “Don’t let the lady hear you saying that.

Foolish doesn’t seem bothered. “She’d probably thank me.”

Maybe so. Her husband shares the space of this world with them, though Hannah has yet to meet him.

Found a home next to another not-god and settled down. Killed his son, the stories say. The cycle continues by whatever means necessary. Hannah knows it well.

They’ve gotten off track. Hannah didn’t come here to have some sort of centuries-in-the-making existential crisis, but Foolish seems aware. His emerald eyes gleam back sharp light as his expression stays unvexed and Hannah feels the stirring of greenery in her own body, between the hard lines of human ribs and a heart that pumps no rhythm.

“Dream brought Tommy back?” he asks, even though they both know the answer.

He grants her mercy in his front hall and it makes her want to argue, but there’s nothing rewarding in fighting someone without any fight in them. Hannah half-heartedly awaits the day Foolish embraces his godhood once more, stops concealing it behind acceptance at being undervalued and a false sense of normalcy.

As though she’s one to talk.

“He’s your brother,” she reminds.

_“Adopted.”_

“You act like that matters.”

Foolish puffs his chest out and Hannah rolls her eyes at the humanizing show of strength in a place where, objectively, blood is meant to be spilled like sacrifice. “Maybe he wanted to be like his big bro.”

“Please,” she huffs, “never say those words again.”

“What, you think I wouldn’t be a good brother?”

 _“Now_ you want to be related to him?”

Golden skin glitters as Foolish sets his shoulders and Hannah abruptly remembers how long he’s been at this by now. The tides he must’ve seen turn, without ever a care for the grass or the soil.

He loves this, all of it, in a way she doesn’t understand. He does take it seriously.

A serious Foolish is unnerving, even to her. She can’t imagine what that must be like to the mortal eye.

“What do _you_ want?” he asks earnestly.

Hannah falters. “What can we do?”

“On brand for you.” The facade - or truth, more accurately, but if you spend all your time in costume, when does it become clothing - is dropped just as quickly as it came. Foolish walks in a lazy circle around one of the etchings on the floor. “Directionless.”

“Why are you trying to make me your enemy?” she groans, running a hand through her hair.

Every time. The unbalance is a pull, they are opposing magnets. She is a piece of death and he is undying. She is the rich earth and he is that which leaves it scarred.

He smiles how he would toward anyone else, soft and playful. “Causing problems runs in the family.”

“Okay, _adopted.”_ She stresses the syllables and stretches out her arm, sharp thorns finding their foothold in her sinews as they constrict. “What do we do?”

“We leave him to do his thing,” he says, like that’s the long and short of it. As if it’s that simple.

“You’re joking.”

“Dream isn’t the first person to think he can be a god,” Foolish shakes his head and the beast he wears as a hat’s tail swings, “and he probably won’t be the last.”

“But he’s _done something_ with it,” Hannah protests.

“Tommy’s his opposite. It all balances itself out.”

Balance. Such confidence in the fabric of the universe, as though it hasn’t knitted itself into knots before.

Hannah’s skin crawls at the idea of letting someone resurrected live, the inherent _wrongness_ of it, like packing dirt into a mold only to reveal that it has become an apple once more.

A magic trick meant to make money off gullible street folk, not world-altering decisions on the backs of two tired beings who’d wanted to find something easy.

Sometimes, Hannah wonders if this sort of requirement of intervention is her punishment for trying to blend in with humanity. The reverse of Dream.

She shakes that train of thought off of its track quickly.

“Then what?” Hannah reiterates. “Are we just powerless?”

Foolish’s face falls slightly. “We have a common enemy,” he says. “Even with Dream.”

Pieces of Hannah’s memory begin to click and clatter, the first fallen seeds from a sprout. Carriers of the future and indicative of the end fast-approaching; she shudders at the recollection of a soul-sucking being.

The Crimson. The egg, as Sam’s red-eyed friends affectionately refer to it as. The sickness that wracks her bones whenever a flower somewhere along the path into the central part of settled land is turned pale, or taken away entirely, both by some inexplicable force with a burnt-sugar edge.

“It spoke to me,” she admits.

To get in the ear of a goddess is no small feat, especially one like Hannah, who has no want nor passion in any direction. Apathy is no food for parasites, but her fellow god, in many ways more human than she, only nods in apparent understanding.

“I speak its language,” Foolish’s gaze turns distant. “It didn’t need any tricks to get to me, but I can still tell that it’s _bad.”_

Hannah squeezes a petal on her wrist between her thumb and forefinger. It bends to her will. “What does it tell you?”

Foolish reaches for her, presses an armored palm against her arm. It’s an empty gesture, neither of them hum with blood, but something about it makes everything more tangible, even in his empty desert home.

“Not yet.”

He says it like a vow and Hannah has no idea why, but it’s the honesty in his expression and the dread at the thought of that red mass and the fact that eternity is something so awfully lonely that keeps her from prying further.

Against something that scares even the most callous of mortals, it’s better that they work together.

They can deal with Dream later, after all. They have time.

**Author's Note:**

> In sum:
> 
> \- I really hope you (if you see this) don't mind me riffing off of your work  
> \- This was really fun to write, I think it's ooc in either direction (to canon & the original work) but oh well  
> \- I love Hannah and Foolish and I'm so excited to see more lore from them  
> \- Drink some water if you haven't in a bit !!  
> \- Check out my Tumblr if you'd like, same @, I'm an amalgamation of dsmp opinions


End file.
